February resulted in an unfavourable variance of $1.228 million for the board's service outsourcing division, leaving the year to date also unfavourable, by an amount of $2.143 million.
Board chairman Joe Butterfield had said this was of "concern" to the DHB and would impact on the overall 2012 budget.
"It's not impressive, is it. We were going along hunky-dory until December, and now this in February," Mr Butterfield said.
The deficit had come from personnel costs, including medical costs, combined with outsourcing and costs towards matching full-time equivalent workers.
Overtime costs were $239,000, $140,000 more than had been budgeted for, due in part to doctors working some additional shifts to cover vacant positions, which increases the DHB's costs due to overtime charges.
The overtime charges also reflected the incidence of callbacks for doctors on call.
Nursing costs were also above budget for February by $24,000 and clinical costs reached a recorded deficit of $30,000.
The meeting agenda said the February result had impacted adversely on the year-end forecast and further costs were expected.
However, the total revenue of $265,000 was better than budget for the month and $105,000 better than the year-to-date plan.
The full SDHB budget would be discussed today in Queenstown.
